World/Nation Briefs January 27, 2012
Romney on the attack in final Florida debate
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - An aggressive Mitt Romney repeatedly challenged Republican rival Newt Gingrich Thursday night in the final debate before next week's critical Florida primary, demanding an apology for an ad saying he harbors anti-immigrant sentiments and ridiculing the former House speaker's call to colonize the moon.
"If I had a business executive come to me and say I want to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I'd say, 'You're fired,"' Romney declared. That was just one particularly animated clash between two rivals struggling for supremacy in the race to pick an opponent to President Barack Obama in the fall.
Gingrich responded heatedly. "You don't just have to be cheap everywhere. You can actually have priorities to get things done." He said that as speaker of the House he had helped balance the budget while doubling spending on the National Institutes of health.
The debate was the 19th since the race for the Republican nomination began last year, and the second in four days in the run-up to Tuesday's Florida primary. Opinion polls make the race a close one - slight advantage Romney - with two other contenders, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Texas Rep. Ron Paul far behind.
Gingrich's upset victory in the South Carolina primary last week upended the race for the nomination, and Romney in particular can ill-afford a defeat on Tuesday.
Pentagon: Nuclear force will not shrink
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon outlined a plan Thursday for slowing the growth of military spending, including cutting the size of the Army and Marine Corps, retiring older planes and trimming war costs. It drew quick criticism from Republicans, signaling the difficulty of scaling back defense budgets in an election year.
The changes Defense Secretary Leon Panetta described at a news conference are numerous but hardly dramatic. They aim to save money by delaying some big-ticket weapons like a next-generation nuclear-armed submarine, but the basic shape and structure of the military remains the same.
The Army would shrink from a peak of 570,000 to 490,000 within five years, and the Marines would drop by 20,000, to 182,000. Those are considerable declines, but both services will still be slightly larger than on 9/11, before they began a decade of war. Both will keep their footholds abroad, although the Army will decrease its presence in Europe and the Marines plan to increase theirs in Asia.
Somali captors move hostage after SEAL rescue
MOGADISHU, Somalia - Pirates moved an American hostage at least three times in 24 hours and threatened Thursday to kill him after U.S. Navy SEALs rescued an American and a Dane in a bold, dark-of-night raid that raises questions about whether other Western captives are now in greater danger.
"If they try again, we will all die together," warned Hassan Abdi, a Somali pirate connected to the gang holding the American, who was kidnapped Saturday in northern Somalia.
"It's difficult to hold U.S. hostages, because it's a game of chance: die or get huge money. But we shall stick with our plans and will never release him until we get a ransom," Abdi said.
U.S. Navy SEALs parachuted into Somalia early Wednesday and hiked to where captors were holding 32-year-old American Jessica Buchanan and Poul Hagen Thisted, a 60-year-old Dane. A shootout ensued and nine captors were killed. Buchanan, Thisted and the U.S. troops were all unharmed. The two aid workers had been kidnapped by gunmen in October while working on demining projects for the Danish Refugee Council.
Egypt bans travel for senior U.S. official's son
CAIRO - Egypt banned at least 10 Americans and Europeans from leaving the country, including the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, hiking tensions with Washington over a campaign by Egypt's military against groups promoting democracy and human rights.
The United States warned Thursday that the campaign raised concerns about Egypt's transition to democracy and could jeopardize American aid that Egypt's battered economy needs badly after a year of unrest.
The travel ban was part of an Egyptian criminal investigation into foreign-funded democracy organizations after soldiers raided the offices of 10 such groups last month, including those of two American groups.
Obama, Brewer have traded barbs before
GLENDALE, Ariz. - Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer says she meant no disrespect when she pointed a finger at President Barack Obama during an intense discussion on an airport tarmac. But the Republican governor says the Democratic president showed disrespect for her by abruptly ending their conversation.
Obama, in an interview Thursday with ABC News, said it's "a classic example of things getting blown out of proportion."
The brief encounter - out of earshot of observers but captured on camera - was a highly visible demonstration of the verbal and legal skirmishing that has regularly occurred between Brewer and Obama's administration over illegal immigration and other issues.
Airport arrivals for presidents normally involve mere pleasantries between those involved, but Brewer and Obama have a history. And part of that history is what apparently got things going, according to accounts provided by Brewer and the White House.
Twitter unveils tool that can erase tweets
SAN FRANCISCO - Twitter has refined its technology so it can censor messages on a country-by-country basis.
The additional flexibility announced Thursday is likely to raise fears that Twitter's commitment to free speech may be weakening as the short-messaging company expands into new countries in an attempt to broaden its audience and make more money.
But Twitter sees the censorship tool as a way to ensure individual messages, or "tweets," remain available to as many people as possible while it navigates a gauntlet of different laws around the world.
Before, when Twitter erased a tweet it disappeared throughout the world. Now, a tweet containing content breaking a law in one country can be taken down there and still be seen elsewhere.
Hegyes, 'Welcome Back Kotter's' Epstein, dies
METUCHEN, N.J. - Robert Hegyes, the actor best known for playing Jewish Puerto Rican student Juan Epstein on the 1970s TV show "Welcome Back Kotter" has died. He was 60.
A spokesman at JFK Medical Center in Edison, N.J., told the Star-Ledger newspaper that Hegyes, of Metuchen, arrived at the hospital Thursday morning in full cardiac arrest and died.
- Associated Press